Travel: They Live! [Day L]

Wherein yeah, Los Angeles is a tiny bit creepy.

There is a sheen to some of these people.

It's not immediately visible.  Everyone here carries oil-removing wipes in their purses to prevent any unwanted glimmers.  But it is there in the eyes.  You can see it when they run to catch up in heels and squash torsos together and yip, high-pitched.  You can see it in heads bend over iPhones, thumbs tapping furiously as they wander down the halls.

Talk bounces off them, but they never stop making sounds at each other.  Every time a door opens here, I jump.  My mouth curves up.

Today I feel myself reflected in flat white teeth.

Notes from the last week.

This is all minor nervousness, the kind of thing that usually gets written down on the backs of napkins and then tossed in the trash.  The people here are really nice to me, actually, and I am sure this is all in my head.  I probably just act weird.  Actually, I know I act weird.

Cheers
Julia

Travel: Schrodinger's Date and Other Phenomena That Should Have Stopped In High School [Day XL]

Wherein I take pot shots at my own passivity.  Also cats die.

When Erwin Schrodinger posited a quantum thought experiment wherein the state of a boxed cat could be termed simultaneously ‘alive’ and ‘dead’ as long as it was not visible to the experimenter, I doubt he understood what far-reaching consequences his words would have on the dating tactics of 21^st century dillweeds.

Allow me to explain.

Most dates are defined by their concrete existence.  One asks, receives affirmation that a date is welcome, and then proceeds to go bowling or whatnot.  This is fine – consider this the walking-about version of the cat.

The trouble begins when you accompany a friend to a film/passion play/narwhal dinner theatre and begin to notice that they are behaving… oddly.  Perhaps they’re a new friend you’re just getting to know, or an old one with whom you’ve been out of touch.  Either way, something seems off.  Possible symptoms include: offers to pay for food and/or accoutrements, group outings where six other friends mysteriously fail to show up, and the infamous Long Weird Hug.  You know the one.

Congratulations, you are on a Schrodinger’s Date.  This is a precarious situation.  Acknowledgment of the date-like nature of the evening will force you to confront the problem, effectively killing your Friendship Cat.  But there is a possibility that, if left unexamined by the scientist, the Date Cat will not trigger and you and your companion’s feelings can escape unmolested.

Once you have identified the Schrodinger’s Date, your options are limited.  The simplest solution is to remove the cat from the box posthaste.  Let your companion know in the clearest possible terms the following: the two of you are not on a date.  You will never be on a date.  And if they didn’t want to get their sensitive feelings hurt they should have been more explicit about asking you out so you could have cut their date-like feelings off at the ankles and spared them further pain.

…But who are we kidding.  If you were that sort of person, you would not be trapped in a Schrodinger’s Date in the first place.  They are the exclusive province of the vaguely passive.

So here is your recourse: Do not allow your companion to open Schrodinger’s Box and gas the Friendship Cat.

You are already a master of passivity; crack that nonsense up to eleven.  If you feel that they are reaching for the Box (or putting their lips too close to your face), double down.  Talk about the weather.  Engage deflector shields.  Mix some metaphors too, that should throw them off until you get out of the theatre.  Do not under any circumstances use the word ‘date’ in a sentence.  Avoid calendars and Lebanon.  In fact, just cut them off if they start making a ‘d’ sound.

If, despite all your weasley tactics (that’s weasley, not Weasley – sorry Ron), they manage to posthumously identify your hangout as a date, then it is their fault for not getting your consent before dating you and you can feel free to quietly loathe them while they drive you home because the Los Angeles buses don’t run after 11:00 at night and the 405 is scary as hell.

Watch out for too-long hugs, clueless social navigators of America.  May the Quantum Cat be with you.

Cheers

Julia

Travel: Adventures In Babysitting [Day XXXII]

Wherein the brutality of human nature is revealed.  Also I pretend to be a dinosaur who lives in a piano.

About five years ago, Dana's brother Ben and his girlfriend eloped.  Dana was the only non-priest present the ceremony, which was on a remote beach.  They sent the family pictures after the fact as a wedding announcement.

For a story that starts out so sassy, their family life is pretty normal.  They live about a twenty minute drive from Mary in Pacific Palisades (the Pacific Palisades?  All the names here are slightly weird) with their in-house nanny and two little boys, Nathan and Leo.  I haven't had too much to do with them so far, but today Nathan came over to the house and Mary seemed wiped, so I took us out for a walk.

As it turns out, Nathan is a smart, funny, friendly kid.  We got into dinosaurs pretty quick - it's my safe topic of conversation with four year old boys.  And with them, anything can be a dinosaur, and anyone can be a dinosaur catcher.  We started with a Stegosaurus-box in the house and moved on to garbage cans, the piano, passing dogs, rocks in the creek, and cars.  Every time, we snuck up, 'caught' the dinosaur with the little green nets Mary uses to scoop debris out of her front-yard pond, asked it what we could do to improve its presumably peaceful dinosaur life, and moved on.

I did both the dinosaur voices - Gggh AArghzzzz RRR my throat hurts - and translation.  Nathan was basically Captain Kirk, violating the Prime Dinosaur Directive all over the place.  We transplanted dinosaurs (fallen leaves), fed dinosaurs (the garburator), hid under dinosaurs (the soccer net in the backyard), petted dinosaurs.  Several of the 'dinosaur owners' we encountered (poor unsuspecting folks walking their dogs) found this charming rather than crazy.  It helps to have a four year old along when you're doing this kind of stuff.

Things got weird when we approached a 'sleeping' dinosaur - a big empty black van on the curb.  Nathan said to sneak up on it, so we crawled forward until we were behind the back wheel.  I cautioned Nathan not to actually hit the wheel with his net, and he swiped the air obediently.  "ROOOAR!" went the dinosaur.

I left it up to Nathan.  "Did we catch him?"

Nathan nodded, then dropped the net.  He held his hands up in claw-shapes, and I figured he wanted a turn to be the dinosaur.  "Hello there, dinosaur car," I said.  He shook his head and twisted his hands away from each other.

"I'm not a dinosaur.  I'm killing it by twisting its neck so it can't breathe."

I was stumped, but made appropriate gurgling noises.  "Please let me go!"  I growled.  Nathan made a snap motion with his little hands.  "There, it's dead."  He looked proud.  "Can we go find another one?"

We got up and started to walk back towards the house.  "Was it a bad dinosaur?" I asked.

Nathan looked thoughtful.  "I guess it might have been.  Sometime."

We played for another half-hour, and Nathan killed every dinosaur we met.

Cheers
Julia

Travel: Cat-and-Tonic [Day XXVII]

Wherein the legal age is still twenty-one.  I think.


The grocery store around the corner from the house is a cornucopia of Weird American Things.  Today I was in there buying more tea - I have drunk poor Mary out of Darjeeling and Chai - and a little boy, maybe six or seven, was running around with light-up shoes on and what I thought was a Cat in the Hat t-shirt.  I paused to quietly envy the blinky sneakers and would have moved on, but he banked sharply and crashed into me.

"Sorry," I said.  He nodded and backed away.  Instead of saying Thing 1, his shirt had Drunk 1 written in the circle on the front.  He was unfazed, and disappeared down the liquor aisle.  (Still not used to that either.)  I wandered down after him - there was a hastily written sign on one of the shelves:

Thanks for your feedback.  The liquor section of the store will now be open from 12 PM - 3 AM.

When I got up to the register with my tea, Drunk 1 was helping his young mom out the door with their groceries.  I wonder if he has a twin who was lucky enough to get Drunk 2.

Notes from a very clean comic shop.

I walked from Sunset Boulevard home yesterday, which probably doesn't mean anything to you and didn't mean anything to me either until I did it.  It is a long walk.  But it was very interesting. I never realized how many famous people's names I actually knew until I was edging my way through the tourist collective checking out the brass stars on the street.

It was interesting to see who wanted their picture taken with which plaque: a twenty-something guy was pointing excitedly at the Mary-Kate and Ashley Olsen star; a newlywed couple still in their outfits stood proudly over Marilyn Monroe.  A homeless man was sleeping on Werner Herzog, but I think they'll move him soon.  The homeless man, not Werner.  Damn unclear English syntax.

Cheers
Julia